Thanks in large measure to warming temperatures, the average snowpack in U.S. western states has dropped by 15 to 30 percent since 1915. The water in that lost snowpack is comparable in volume to Lake Mead. With a maximum capacity of 9.3 trillion gallons, Mead is the West’s largest manmade reservoir. The new data on snowpack declines are among the striking results of a study led by Philip Mote, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oreg ...read more

"Salami slicing" refers to the practice of breaking scientific studies down into small chunks and publishing each part as a seperate paper. Given that scientists are judged in large part by the number of peer-reviewed papers they produce, it's easy to understand the temptation to engage in salami publication. It's officialy discouraged, but it's still very common to see researchers writing perhaps 3 or 4 papers based on a single project that could, realistically, have been one big paper. ...read more

When solving a crime, detectives don’t always have access to footage or photographs of their suspect. Instead, the detectives have to painstakingly search for small, easily overlooked clues — such as fingerprints. Like detectives, astronomers don’t always have the option of simply examining an image when they want to solve a mystery. Instead, astronomers usually must meticulously piece together tiny bits of evidence, often by scouring the heavens to hunt for clues. And one of ...read more

Bro, what even is a species? I've been writing about various species for a while now, and this latest Attenborough is really throwing me for a loop. It's a kind of small bird from the Amazon called a gnatcatcher. They're a kind of small songbird related to wrens, and they feast on insects with small, sharp beaks—in between warbling out their songs, I imagine. And it's most likely a new species. But the researchers in charge of deciding weren't all that sure. Because we don't ha ...read more

A nor'easter with winds ranging up to hurricane strength is causing misery along much of the U.S. East Coast today. But from space, it's a strangely beautiful sight to behold. The fierce storm is causing flooding, power outages, suspension of Amtrak rail service, and hundreds of delayed or cancelled flights in and out of area airports. New York's LaGuardia airport has closed down completely due to high winds. The storm may even turn out to be more damaging than th ...read more

Supermassive black holes sit in the centers of all massive galaxies. Many of these giants are actively accreting material, earning them the name active galactic nuclei or AGN. As material falls in toward the black hole, it creates a disk that shines brightly and can even generate huge outbursts and jets. Compared with a galaxy hundreds of thousands of light-years across, the accretion disk around a supermassive black hole and the dusty structure that surrounds it are extremely small — on t ...read more

With the growing encroachment of Big Data and the Internet of Things and other digital buzzwords on our daily lives, it should be no shock that we’re now on the verge of literally eating the latest advance in electronics. It’s actually pretty neat. According to a study this week in ACS Nano, chemists have learned how to imbue a laser-branded conductive pattern onto anything containing carbon, including your dinner. Certified Organic Chemistry It’s all thanks to graphene, a pre ...read more

In a 1973 study, scientists at the University of Chicago fitted cocaine-dependent rhesus monkeys with stainless steel catheter harnesses, allowing them to self-administer PCP to until they were “highly intoxicated.” This type of research isn’t exactly unusual — for decades, humans have been pumping primates full of psychedelics like LSD and DMT to study the effects of hallucinogenic drugs. But in a recent first, researchers at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Nor ...read more

Athletes training for endurance competitions tend to eat a lot, especially carbohydrates, which produce glucose to fuel the muscles. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps took in 12,000 calories a day during the 2008 Summer Olympics, for example. Regimented nutrition diets are also popular among athletes. The top Mixed Martial Arts fighters employ full-time nutritionists who prepare each meal for them. But fasting? More bodybuilders, professional cyclists and other athletes are turning up the ...read more

If we're going back to the moon, we're going to need to learn how to deal with the dust. U.S. President Donald Trump has made returning to the moon a priority, and China and India both have lunar landers in the works. The endeavor is difficult for myriad reasons, but one borders on the prosaic — moon dust. Dust Bowl The moon is a dirty place. Apollo astronauts reported returning to their lander covered in dust that smelled of spent gunpowder — astronaut Alan Bean even worried t ...read more